[Editor’s note: To see our other selections for Best of 2025, see here]

One could argue that unlike film and music, television’s aperture has only grown in recent years. The movement of stars and directors from film to TV (which historically had been seen as inferior to the movie industry), bolder attempts at storytelling, and the infusion of money into production has resulted in a real shift in quality. While streaming has diffused offerings across platforms – we don’t have 20 million people watching Seinfeld weekly on NBC anymore – there’s no shortage of great television. Our senior editors took a pass and provide you with the best shows they caught this year. 

Ryan Reft

Right now, it feels like we have a lot of pretty good television shows, but nothing transcendent. Still, I enjoyed more than a few series that came out this year, though I should note after reviewing my list that I’m apparently addicted to procedurals. For all my anti-England biases, I found several series either set in Britain, produced in Britain, or both entertaining. First, Adolescence and Dept. Q were both thought- provoking and effective. The former consists of four single shot episodes (since the Copacabana scene in Goodfellas, I’ve been an absolute sucker for single shot scenes, let alone entire television episodes using the technique) and documents the impact of a teenage boy’s murdering of his fellow classmate, an adolescent girl, and its reverberations. It’s a heartrending depiction of the danger of unsupervised social media. While some have knocked the show for focusing on the perpetrator and his family rather than the victim (a fair criticism, to be honest), it does not lack for insights and does not attempt to sugarcoat the situation that we seem to be in stuck as a society.

Department Q, which I unsuccessfully recommended to my Anglophile parents (my father called me up after watching the first episode and complained that it was weird), is your basic police procedural set mostly in Edinburgh. Difficult and traumatized police detective Carl Morck, played by Matthew Goode, assembles a team to solve (despite his efforts to sabotage it), a years-old cold case. Scott Frank, the writer and director of the show, has had successes – the George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez Detroit-based Out of Sight (1998) and the series The Queens Gambit but also some misfires like the Clive Owen led Monsieur Spade (2024) (which had one of the worst endings of any show I’ve ever watched). Dept Q is harrowing, but it’s also shot through with Scottish humor. Alexej Manvelov’s performance as Akram Salim, a Syrian immigrant with a tragic and mysterious personal history that is hinted at but never fully revealed, provides both emotional heft and comic relief. Similarly, the fifth season of Slow Horses (that’s THREE British series I’m recommending folks, an absolute record for me) isn’t bad either though the books on which they are based are even better. Still, Gary Oldham’s Jackson Lamb, a noxiously delightful former MI-5 operative who denigrates his team on a near constant basis, remains one of the more singular characters of this era. 

Okay so as noted, nearly all my recommendations are basically procedurals. Sue me because I have two more. HBO’s When No One Sees Us revolves around an investigation into a local murder and drug ring in southern Spain, led by two detectives played by Maribel Verdú and Mariela Garriga, respectively. Lucia (Verdú) leads the investigation for the Spanish police while Magaly (Garriga) does the same on behalf of the U.S. military due to the involvement of soldiers from the nearby American base. “The show is gorgeous to behold, bright and sunny and rich in detail; people’s cars, their gaits, the way they smooth their hair when taking off a hat; those things all add up. ‘No One’ is also full of life and humor,” New York Times critic Margaret Lyons wrote in March. Agree, though I’d add if you’ve ever been to southern Spain near Seville where it’s largely set, it’s even more worthwhile. 

Also on HBO, the Delco-based Task, featuring a bedraggled Mark Ruffalo, a cagey and determined Emilia Jones, and an incredible Tom Pelphrey, explores the bonds of family, and the power (or lack thereof) of belief through the investigation of local drug heists conducted by a small group of vigilantes seeking retribution for a violent act committed against one of their own. Pennsylvania accents – reminiscent of showrunner Brad Inglesby’s Mare of Easttown – abound. Pelphrey’s haunted but irresponsible Robbie Prendergast leaves an indelible mark while Jones’ Maeve Prendergast, Robbie’s niece, shines as the only person in his family able to see the reality of things as they stand. No one wins in Task and that’s kind of the point. 

Katie Uva

These days, I find myself watching TV for escapism and low stakes – I don’t know if it’s just where I am in my life right now, or if I have a contrarian streak that commits more to light shows as the general TV landscape gets heavier and heavier. But in any case my two favorites this year are The Gilded Age and Death by Lightning. Are these shows objectively excellent? No. Are they overdoing it on the costumes and the mutton chops? Yes. Is the dialogue heavily weighted toward exposition and, in the case of The Gilded Age, endlessly recounting whether someone is going to Newport or just got back from Newport? Yes. But in both cases I am really enjoying watching good actors chew the scenery, have fun, and spout words like “parvenu” with regularity. 

Featured image (at top): Image from LOOK Magazine, Charlotte Brooks, photographer, March 3, 1969, Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress.